from the those-that-live-by-the-tweet,-die-by-the-tweet dept

Last month, we pointed out that that pretty much everyone agrees that TPP is dead... except that some still cling to the hope that Trump might be persuaded to carry out another swift U-turn and revivify the zombie deal. As Mike noted, Trump doesn't seem to be against these kinds of mega-trade deals in principle, it's just that he says the US generally concedes too much in them. That means he'd need some kind of high-profile win to make TPP 2.0 compatible with his earlier condemnation of TPP 1.0's terms.

The hope amongst true TPP believers seems to be that Trump could reopen the negotiations, talk tough, and strike a deal that is far more favorable to the US, which he could then ratify, holding it up as another Trump triumph. But in an article on the Cobram Courier site, the Australian ambassador to the US, Joe Hockey, says it would be "fanciful" to think the other TPP nations would happily reopen negotiations so that Trump could rewrite it in his favor. Leaving aside the fact that as one of Australia's top diplomats, Hockey doubtless knows exactly what his government's views are on this and thus speaks with authority, his logic is simple and pretty inarguable:

If the US gets a better deal out of the TPP then the other 11 countries have to make sacrifices and those other countries are going to find it politically impossible to sell it domestically that they are making more sacrifices than President Trump.

Hockey said that governments in the other nations had already come under intense domestic pressure over the current TPP, and the concessions they had needed to make in order to secure a deal. A new agreement would be even worse, because there's an extra factor exacerbating the situation:

Those pressures wouldn't get easier if in a very celebrated way the president of the United States says 'We got a better deal' because that means we got a lesser deal.

Despite the prayers of some die-hard supporters, it seems unlikely that Trump could manage to get the other TPP nations to agree to reopen the deal after eight years of fraught negotiations, and then persuade them to sign up to amendments that gave the US more and the others less. But even if he did, it would take only one triumphant @realDonaldTrump tweet boasting hyperbolically of his success -- naturally RT'd ten thousand times around the world -- for the President to make the new deal irremediably toxic for the other TPP governments, and thus impossible to ratify.

from the municipal-cheat-code dept

I have some admiration for South Korea's ability to look squarely at the national hostage situation that is its northerly neighbor and spend so much time enjoying video games. That this dedication to my favorite hobby occasionally pulls the country's government into putting forward dumb laws is an unfortunate by-product, however. It seems the South Korean government is still at it, as it attempts to join Japan in criminalizing cheating in video games.

And it has managed to construct this law to criminalize cheating in what simply has to be the dumbest way possible.

According to PvPLive, a recent amendment passed by the South Korean parliament bans the “manufacturing and distributing programs that are not allowed by the game company and its Terms of Service.” In theory, this makes it easier for the creators of competitive games to crack down on things like hacking programs, aimbots, and other game mods that give players an unfair advantage in online play.

Great theory, but this method for stopping cheaters should be setting off alarm bells all over the place. Criminalizing the violation of a ToS is a really, really bad idea. Our own CFAA legislation should serve as a wondeful primer on how broadly criminalizing violating terms of service can result in gross overreach by prosecutors who will use the law as a tool to jail people nobody thinks should be imprisoned. There's a reason why these attempts to use ToS to thwart cheating, or modding, are widely considered creative end-arounds to the actual law: because they're basically bullshit. Codifying into law the criminalization of the violation of a software ToS that nobody reads is casting quite a wide net to combat an otherwise small problem.

It's also well worth noting that most of the benign modding community regularly violates game ToS as they do their work.

But while this could deter would-be hackers from creating programs explicitly for cheating, the somewhat ambiguous act of outlawing any program that violates the Terms of Service has some League of Legendsand Overwatch players worried that non-malicious mods could be caught in the crossfire.

Look, eSports is becoming a significant enough industry that I understand the effort to combat cheating within it. And the online portion of the gaming experience is so center stage at this point that it would have been surprising if governments weren't starting to look at how to protect the industry from a saturation of cheaters who break the game for other gamers. But broadly worded legislative nukes aren't the way to combat a cheating insurgency.

from the that's-not-how-it-works dept

Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn doesn't have a very good history demonstrating any knowledge of how the internet works. She's generally in favor of two very stupid policies related to the internet. First, getting rid of net neutrality. Second, forcing tech companies to censor the internet to stop "piracy." The fact that her rationales for these two things are completely in conflict with each other doesn't seem to enter her thought process. That is, she claims that there shouldn't be any net neutrality because it's important to keep the internet free from all regulations. Here's Blackburn explaining this point in a nice, quick and utterly idiotic whiteboard video:

If you can't see that, she starts out by talking up how wonderful the internet is just as it is today, and notes that it's necessary for creating jobs. Then she says this:

Some people fear that without government intervention, that entrepreneurs and innovators are going to hijack the internet that you enjoy. The World Wide Web! This hasn't happened. And there has never been a time when a consumer needed a federal bureaucrat to intervene.

Then she talks about passing her legislation to block the FCC "from ever regulating the internet" because "we want to keep it open free and prosperous."

Of course, she's quite willing to sing a different tune when it comes to her other pet projects. She was a major backer of SOPA, of course, which was a bill to regulate the internet and open it up to Chinese-style site-blocking. A few months ago, she also made the nutty claim that the script kiddie botnet hack that took down large parts of the internet would have been stopped if only SOPA had been passed which made no sense at all.

If you can't see that, it's part of a clip of Blackburn on CNN talking about "fake news," where she says:

If anyone is putting fake news out there, the ISPs have the obligation to, in some way, get that off the web. And maybe it's time for these information systems to look to have some type of news editor doing some vetting on that. Whether it's the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians or whomever. You do not want that out there because it's... because it's fake news! It is not something that is going to be correct. It's going to end up being refuted. But it takes time, effort and energy to do that, and trying to sway or misinform is completely inappropriate, and in my opinion unethical.

So she isn't directly calling for legislation, but any time you have a sitting legislator (not to mention a Trump transition team member...) talking about how internet companies need to censor the internet to do away with "fake news" your ears should perk up. First off, note that she says that refuting fake stories takes "time, effort and energy" but doesn't note that finding "some type of news editor" who can review the news postings of billions of internet users is, um, physically impossible. Does she really not understand the scale of what she's talking about?

Second, I get the feeling that Marsha Blackburn's definiton of "fake news" differs from many other people's -- which is why we've noted that the whole "fake news freakout" is so misguided. The term can mean just about anything -- and all too frequently means "news I disagree with." I'm going to imagine that Rep. Blackburn doesn't much like this article for instance. Does she believe that her friends, the internet service providers, have "an obligation" to get this article "off the web"?

Because that's a pretty serious issue: you have a sitting legislator effectively calling for internet censorship based on a vague standard of news being "fake." Somewhat ironically, Blackburn has been one of the most vocal opponents of the bogeyman of the Fairness Doctrine -- which was an attempt to beat back biased news in the past by requiring "equal time" to opposing views. But Blackburn is constantly freaking out about a non-existent "fairness doctrine" for the internet that she insists was part of the FCC's net neutrality rules (it wasn't, and never was suggested). But her suggestion for having internet companies censor "fake news" seems even worse than a fairness doctrine. Rather than encouraging more speech, Blackburn is flat out supporting having internet companies censor content they deem to be "fake." That's bad.

from the this-could-get-interesting dept

All year long, there have been reports talking about how the Pirate Party in Iceland were poised to take control over the Icelandic government in the elections. Many publications acted like it was a foregone conclusion. However, if anything should be obvious this year, what the polls and the press are telling you about likely outcomes of elections should be taken with a large grain of salt. So we didn't report on it -- even after the election when the Pirate Party did well, but still came in third place. However, with the top two parties failing to build a coalition to form a new government, the Iceland Pirates have been given a shot and they're hard at work trying to build a coalition that will form the government.

Of course, this still isn't a guarantee -- and there's already talk of having to hold another election, but hopefully the Pirates can put together something. While it does feel like many people involved in Pirate Parties have underestimated what it actually takes to govern, it would certainly be interesting -- especially in Iceland -- to see what they could do.

The party appears to be taking a measured approached to a task viewed by many as exceeding urgent and pressing. Members of the parliamentary party spent all weekend discussing the issues between themselves, with no representatives of any other parties involved.

“We don’t want this this to be a rushed or botched job. We want to do things properly,” says Pirate MP Einar Aðalsteinn Brynjólfsson.

“Of course, it is time for a new government to be formed – otherwise we could be heading for a constitutional crisis. The current government is a caretaker government with a limited mandate.”

Hopefully the parties can work out their differences and create a coalition government led by the Pirates. Icleand has swung back and forth on the pendulum of supporting true internet freedom in the past, but having the Pirates in charge could lead to some interesting and worthwhile experiments. And, in an age where too much reasonable anger at old line politicians is being directed towards ultra-nationalistic campaigners who tend to look backwards rather than forward, it will be worthwhile to see what a party with a truly forward looking agenda could accomplish.

from the some-good-news dept

Back in April, we wrote about an interesting lawsuit filed over excessive fees for PACER, the federal court system's electronic records system. If you're not a lawyer or journalist, and have never used PACER, it is difficult to put into words what a ridiculous and outdated system it is. Not only does it look like it was designed and built in 1998, the court system leverages ridiculous fees for everything you do in it. It's officially 10 cents per page (with a limit of $3 max per document), but that's not just per page you download of court documents, but everything. Do a search? That'll be at least 10 cents and possibly more if the magic PACER system decides the results are long enough. Look at a docket of a court case? Better hope it's not one with hundreds of filings, because just opening the docket can cost you $3 -- and that's before downloading any documents. As we pointed out years ago, the fees charged for PACER appear to be illegal. The law, 28 USC 123, that allows the court system to charge for PACER limits the fees to being "reasonable" -- and that means, among other things, that the fees are only used for the upkeep of PACER, and not for other stuff.

But that's not true. PACER brings in a ton of money and most of it is used for other things within the court system (and very little of it seems to be earmarked for actually upgrading PACER). This is a huge problem if you believe in the rule of law, and the idea that people should be able to read the law. Because the law is much more than the official regulations -- it also includes case law. And PACER has made it so that the relevant caselaw can often be inaccessible and expensive. That's crazy.

So the lawsuit that was filed earlier this year was interesting -- and of course the federal government tried to get it tossed out. Thankfully, the judge in the case, Ellen Segal Huevelle, has rejected that request and allowed the case to move forward. The government objected on two grounds: first, that a similar, but slightly different case, had also been filed by someone else -- and (more importantly) that the lawsuit failed to state a claim, because they didn't first complain to the PACER operators. Judge Huevelle doesn't buy either argument. About the two separate cases, the judge notes that the two cases are about two different things. This case is about how PACER charges too much per page under the law. The other case -- Fisher v. the United States -- (which, yes, we also wrote about) is about how PACER overcharges people when they just look at a docket. That is, the claim is that because PACER just considers every 4,320 bytes to be "a page" it is overcharging people, since dockets that are many fewer pages are being charged at higher rates. As Huevelle notes, these are different issues:

According to the class
action complaint in Fisher, “PACER claims to charge users $0.10 for each page in a docket
report” and calculates pages by equating 4,320 extracted bytes to one page, thus “purporting to
charge users $0.10 per 4,320 bytes. But the PACER system actually miscalculates the number of
extracted bytes in a docket report, resulting in an overcharge to users.”... In other words, Fisher claims an error in the application of the
PACER fee schedule to a particular type of request. In contrast, plaintiffs here challenge the legality of the fee schedule. These are separate issues, and a finding of liability in
one case would have no impact on liability in the other case. Therefore, the Court will not
dismiss the suit based on the first-to-file rule.

Personally, I think both cases have merit, but they are definitely on different issues.

As for the failure to state a claim, again, the court doesn't buy it. Here, the government argued that because when you sign up for a PACER account, you agree to all the fine print in the user agreement, and part of that says that if there are billing "errors" you "must alert the PACER Service Center." Thus, our government lawyers argue, it means that because the plaintiffs here didn't claim "errors" in their bill to the PACER Service Center, there is no legal argument here. This is a ridiculous argument. And the court recognizes that. First it notes that in the other case mentioned above (the Fisher case), the courts have already said that clause does not require you to go to PACER before suing, but more importantly, notes that this case isn't about billing errors at all. It's about whether or not the bills are legal at all:

This Court need not reach those legal issues because, unlike Fisher,
plaintiffs here do not claim a billing error. Therefore, even if the notification requirement
constituted a contractual condition, it would not apply to the plaintiffs’ challenges to the legality
of the fee schedule. Likewise, even if users were required to exhaust their claims for billing
errors, that requirement would not apply to the claim in this case. In sum, the PACER policy
statement provides no basis for dismissing this suit.

At this point, there's still plenty to go on this case -- and this is just a procedural step along the way. But it's nice to see that the court recognizes the government's ridiculous arguments for what they are.

from the jerk-like dept

Bethesda has something of a complicated history on our pages. The company is at once often terrible on matters of enforcing its intellectual property in a protectionist manner, while also occasionally acting quite good on matters of connecting with its fans in a meaningful and downright sweet manner. Few and far between have been the stories of those two separate philosophies intersecting, but we have such an instance now as Bethesda has demanded any Bethesda trademark words be removed in metatags on the website for DoomRL, a fan-made rogue-like inspired by the classic Doom games.

It's a strangely worded letter in a couple of respects. First, the letter seems to be focused on the use of words and/or phrases trademarked by Bethesda/ZeniMax within the metatags for the DoomRL website, as opposed to making any sort of copyright claim on the game itself. In other words, it's not at all clear from the threat letter whether or not the company is objecting to the fan-game in any way, or just the use of the metatags. If the latter, the threat makes very little sense. The text on the website doesn't mention Bethesda or ZeniMax at all and only mentions ID Software to credit it for being the creators of the Doom franchise. The trademarks that appear to be in question are references to Doom itself.

And these are a game, a website, and references that are years old. The game appears to have been in production for at least six years and has been publicized on the web for about as long. It's a game that doesn't resemble any actual Bethesda property and is instead a fan's new take on the franchise, offered for free. I don't read any objection into the game itself in the threat letter, so why make such a big deal over the use of the Doom name itself? Is Bethesda cool with a fan making a Doom inspired game, so long as that fan never mentions it to anyone?

As a result of the threat, however, creator Kornel Kisielewicz has decided to scrap DoomRL for a successor that doesn't include any Doom IP. This is about the time that defenders of copyright and trademark will chime in to suggest that intellectual property enforcement has led to the creation of new intellectual property, thus fulfilling its purpose... except that isn't really true. It's basically the same game, just with the added effort of pretending like it's something it wasn't originally. Yay?

And, more importantly, the stripping of references to Doom helps Bethesda how, exactly? What was once a native expansion of the franchise as an expression of love from a fan, one which could only serve to point new potential customers back to the original game series, has instead become something independent of that series. Kisielewicz has even started a Kickstarter for the sanitized game to now profit off of it, instead of acting as a free promoter for Bethesda's game. At best, Bethesda loses out on a free marketing vector for its Doom franchise, while at worst some in the gaming public will want to punish the company for this aggressive behavior. How exactly is this kind of IP bludgeoning a better option than working with the fan/creator?

from the Barbie-is-a-rat dept

So we've talked a bit about the privacy implications of smart toys, and the fact that people aren't exactly thrilled that Barbie now tracks your childrens' behavior and then uploads that data to the cloud. Like most internet-of-not-so-smart things, these toys often come with flimsy security and only a passing interest in privacy. As such we've increasingly seen events like the Vtech hack, where hackers obtained the names, email addresses, passwords, and home addresses of 4,833,678 parents, and the first names, genders and birthdays of more than 200,000 kids.

Unsurprisingly, the collection of kids' babbling while in the company of smart toys continues to ruffle feathers. This week, a coalition of consumer advocates including the Consumer's Union filed suit against Genesis Toys, the maker of two such toys, the My Friend Cayla doll and the i-Que Intelligent Robot. According to the full lawsuit (pdf), the toy maker is violating COPPA (the Childrens’ Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998) by failing to adequately inform parents' that their kids conversations and personal data collected by the toys are being shipped off to servers and third-party companies.

Among the problems cited in the complaint is that the privacy policies governing the collection of kids' data aren't clear, aren't prominently displayed, and often change without notice. Parents aren't properly informed that data is being culled from the toys and sent off to companies like Nuance Communications, most commonly known for its Dragon voice recognition software, but a company that also has prominent roles in healthcare dictation and as a defense contractor. Both toys by proxy are governed by Nuance's privacy policy, which among other things says:

"We may use the information that we collect for our internal purposes to develop, tune, enhance, and improve our products and services, and for advertising and marketing consistent with this Privacy Policy." It continues, “If you are under 18 or otherwise would be required to have parent or guardian consent to share information with Nuance, you should not send any information about yourself to us."

With the toys being marketed to "ages 4 and up" and being mostly used by kids under age 18, the lawsuit states the companies selling and collecting this toy data are violating COPPA. Under COPPA, companies gathering kids data have to provide notice to, and obtain consent from parents regarding data collection. They also have to provide parents tools to access, review and delete this data if wanted, as well as the parental ability to dictate that the data can be collected, but not shared with third parties. The complaint suggests neither Nuance or Genesis Toys are doing any of this.

And again, privacy is just part of the equation. There's also the fact that these toys just aren't all that secure. A report by the Norwegian Consumer Council (pdf) found that a lot of the data being transmitted by these toys is done so via vanilla, unencrypted HTTP connections that could be subject to man in the middle attacks. Reconfiguring the devices to create in-home surveillance tools was also "very easy and requires little technical know-how," according to the report.

So again, much like all internet of things devices, companies were so excited to integrate internet connectivity, they effectively forgot about user privacy and security. Are we perhaps noticing a ongoing theme yet?

from the of-course-it's-not-good dept

The House Judiciary Committee has been "exploring" various copyright reform proposals for a few years now, asking for feedback, holding a "listening tour" and more. Through it all, it seemed pretty clear that the Judiciary Committee is (reasonably) fearful of getting SOPA'd again, and thus was trying to figure out some less controversial proposals it could push forward first to see how they worked. Two, in particular, have been brought up multiple times: moving the Copyright Office out of the Library of Congress... and creating a "small claims court" for copyright infringement. And it appears that's what the Judiciary Committee is now moving forward on, even though both are pretty bad ideas.

Note the very careful "these policy proposals are not meant to be the final word on reform in these areas." That's code for "okay, okay, we're testing the waters here, are people going to freak out about this...."

Anyway, the proposals in question are not horrible, but they're certainly not good either. Most of the attention will be focused on the Copyright Office stuff, but it's the small claims court proposal that is potentially much more nefarious and a much bigger deal. There are almost no details here, but this is what the proposal says:

The Copyright Office should host a small claims system consistent with the report on the issue released by the Copyright
Office. The small claims system should handle low value infringement cases as well as bad faith Section 512 notices. The
Register should be given the authority to promulgate regulations to ensure that the system works efficiently.

As we've seen, already copyright is often used as a way to stifle free expression. Mere threats of lawsuits, along with DMCA takedown letters, have become a very effective way to create chilling effects against content someone doesn't like. Adding in the ability to more easily sue and take people to court -- even if the eventual judgment may be for lower dollar amounts -- is tremendously problematic. If anything, it will just become an incredible tool for copyright trolls. It will legitimize their business model, which is to get a large volume of settlements that are in the hundreds or low thousands of dollars anyway. Obviously, the fact that this court might also handle "bad faith Section 512 notices" (i.e., DMCA takedowns) is designed to appease people who are concerned about the chilling effects here, but it's not clear that will help very much.

Also, somewhat bizarre is that earlier in the document (which we'll get to), they say that the Copyright Office should remain in the legislative branch. Which would then make this small claims court a part of the legislative branch. And that just seems... weird. I guess that's why they refer to it as a small claims "system" rather than a small claims "court."

The issue that's going to get more attention, however, is the attempt to pull the Copyright Office away from the Librarian of Congress' control. This has been something that the Copyright Office itself (and Hollywood and its friends) have been agitating for for some time. The proposal here looks like (again) the Judiciary Committee wants to thread the needle of not technically moving it out of the Library of Congress (the proposal doesn't say one way or the other), but basically giving the Copyright Office full autonomy from the Library, and making the head of the Copyright Office subject to Congressional appointment, rather than at the will of the Librarian of Congress:

The Register of Copyrights and Copyright Office Structure

The Copyright Office should remain part of the Legislative Branch where it can provide independent and timely advice
to Congress on copyright law and policy. Furthermore, the Copyright Office should have autonomy over its budget and
technology needs.

Currently, the Register is not subject to the same nomination and consent process as other senior government officials.
To ensure that the American people have an opportunity to provide input into the selection of future Registers of
Copyright through their elected officials, the next Register and all that follow should be subject to a nomination and
consent process with a 10-year term limit, subject to potential re-nomination. The Copyright Office should also add
several positions to advise the Register including a Chief Economist, Chief Technologist, and a Deputy Register.

Copyright Office Advisory Committees

As copyright creation and distribution rapidly changes due to technological advances, the Copyright Office needs to have
quicker information regarding marketplace changes as it develops policies and provides guidance to federal agencies.
Other federal agencies have standing advisory committees that enable a more efficient knowledge transfer from the
private sector to federal agencies. This model should be duplicated at the Copyright Office.

The Copyright Office of the future should have a combination of permanent and ad-hoc advisory committees
to advise the Register on critical issues. Members of these committees should reflect a wide range of views and
interests. Permanent advisory committees should be created that focus on issues that include but are not limited to
the registration and recordation system, public outreach efforts, access for the visually impaired, and issues related to
libraries, museums, and archives. To ensure that a diverse set of voices is represented, committee membership should be
term limited and the ability of individuals to serve on more than one committee should be limited.

The advisory committee plan again seems like it's trying to appease all sides, but one wonders how it will work in practice. As we've seen with the USTR, the advisory committees have become basically captured by industry lobbyists (despite rules against lobbyists being on those committees), and the end result is that the USTR tends to take instruction from a small group of large, entrenched interests, rather than the public. It seems likely that the same thing would happen here. A Chief Economist is also a loaded position. There are plenty of economists who would look at the actual public benefit to different copyright proposals, but too many economists are likely to just focus on the topline monetary impact on legacy industries, painting a skewed portrait and continuing the false notion that the point of the Copyright Office is to create more and more copyrights, rather than create a plan that actually "promotes the progress of science" as the Constitution requires.

Since the Judiciary Committee insists that this is just them putting out some ideas for comment, it's going to be important that we let them know the many, many pitfalls of these suggestions -- and let them recognize that if these plans are, as seems likely, weighted just to benefit a legacy industry that has a history of fighting innovation -- that will not be acceptable to the public.

from the you're-not-helping dept

Earlier this year, AT&T announced that it planned to shell out $100 billion to acquire Time Warner. That comes on the heels of the company spending $70 billion to acquire DirecTV. Why is AT&T spending countless billions on content and a legacy satellite TV provider when the lion's share of the company's broadband network desperately needs upgrading? Because fixed and wireless broadband subscriber growth has slowed, and telco executives believe they need to turn to content and advertising (read: slinging videos at Millennials) to please investors.

Under fire for the anti-competitive repercussions of its latest deal, AT&T testified this week before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy & Consumer Rights. As you might expect, AT&T and Time Warner both breathlessly insist that there are absolutely no downsides to the companies' merger, adding the deal would be an incredible boon to consumers and the video market alike:

“By joining forces, we will accelerate the development and delivery of the next generation of video services that provide consumers with greater choice, convenience, value, and affordability,” Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes told lawmakers in prepared testimony.

The problem is that's not really true. Most streaming providers are worried that AT&T, which just launched its new "DirecTV Now" streaming service, will make it harder than ever for streaming competitors to license the content (HBO, etc.) they need to compete. Similarly, many (including the outgoing FCC) are concerned that AT&T's decision to zero rate this DirecTV Now content (exempting AT&T's content from usage caps while still penalizing competitors) twists and distorts the open market. AT&T already effectively eliminated a TV market competitor when it acquired DirecTV. Now it's tilting the playing field unfairly in its favor.

These concerns received fleeting lip service at this week's hearing. Instead, the committee spent a significant amount of time listening to folks like Mark Cuban, who attended the hearing to lavish praise on AT&T's latest mega-merger:

“We need more companies ... with the ability to compete with Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. Delivering content to consumers in this app-driven world is not easy, it is very expensive and difficult. ... Alone, it will be very difficult, if not impossible for either AT&T or Time Warner to compete with any of the companies I've mentioned. Together it will still be difficult, but a combined entity at least gives them a chance to battle the dominant players in the marketplace and increase consumer choice and competition for consumer attention."

So one, AT&T is a massive telecom conglomerate that not only owns its own core and last mammoth nationwide network, but also is already the biggest TV provider in the country after its DirecTV acquisition. This scale provides AT&T immeasurable benefits in content negotiations, and the idea that it was in any way difficult for AT&T to compete in this space is laughable. That's before you even mention AT&T's incredible and often comedic lobbying influence on state and federal telecom and media policy. A helpless little daisy, AT&T is not.

And while DirecTV Now might bring some added streaming competition to the space, it's not like Apple, YouTube, Hulu, Sling TV, Sony, HBO and countless other companies aren't flooding into the streaming video space as well. The competition is already coming to this market. Another mega-merger doesn't help this competition, it actively harms it. AT&T is a company with a long, rich history of anti-competitive behavior and defrauding its own customers on multiple occasions. That it will use this expanded size and power in an anti-competitive fashion isn't theoretical. This is what AT&T does.

But zero rating is complicated. Understanding the perils of vertical integration and the threat of one company owning the content and the conduit is difficult. Realizing that AT&T all but owns state and federal government is inconvenient. As such, Cuban tried to trot out a somewhat bizarre little story in which he argues that the AT&T merger would be really wonderful for joe, beer-drinkin' consumer, because, uh, algorithms:

"I would also like to point out one other important element of consumer choice that an AT&T and Time Warner merger would improve.

Each of the largest content companies I have mentioned so far, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple present much if not all of their content algorithmically. As a Facebook user I don’t get to pick what content I get to see in my newsfeed. I can try to influence it, but Facebook algorithms control what I see.

In the future, it won’t be algorithms that choose what we see, our choices will be driven by some form of Artificial Intelligence learning from trillions of disparate inputs.

Meanwhile, for those of us who still enjoy our TV the old-fashioned way, on our couch, cold beverage in one hand and remote in the other, there is a lot to be said for having a company that can afford to continue to offer us that choice. As much of a geek as I am, I like having the choice of searching through a programming guide to see what’s on rather than an algorithm telling me what I should watch. I think a lot of consumers would like to see that choice continue as well."

So one, that entire story makes no goddamned sense. Because Apple, Google and Facebook use algorithms in their news feeds, it's a good idea to let a company with a massive history of anti-competitive behavior grow immeasurably larger? AT&T somehow will provide us with purer access to programming guides free of the nefarious influence of Silicon Valley artificial intelligence? That's so illogical I can't even deconstruct the point Cuban's trying to make. It's like arguing that forest fires are good because pineapples exist.

Granted we've noted a few times that while Cuban has a solid grasp of a number of issues, net neutrality, telecom and media issues aren't among them. As such, he should probably be the last person testifying on the subject before Congress. In fact in writing this piece, I stumbled upon something I wrote for Techdirt back in 2014 when (again) trying to highlight that Cuban doesn't really understand net neutrality:

"Of course Cuban has already made his fortune. Were we to take 1995 Mark Cuban (who was busy building Broadcast.com) and transplant his business into the modern era under AT&T, Verizon and Comcast -- you can be damn sure he'd be taking a very different approach to these issues. Cuban has spent a decade making it abundantly clear he doesn't understand net neutrality, the telecom market or the potential pitfalls of these new cap exempt business models. Perhaps we should put Mark Cuban, Donald Trump and all the rest of the billionaires with plenty to say but little actual understanding in charge of the telecom industry. At least we'd get some entertainment value out of the equation while the Internet burns.

Clearly I opened a portal to another dystopian dimension, and for that I'm truly sorry.

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

Make it easier on yourself to charge your phone while you stay in bed or on the couch with a 3-pack of these 10-ft Samsung-Certified Micro-USB Cables, on sale for $25. These cables are ready to charge your smartphone, tablets, cameras, and any other micro-USB compatible devices you may have.

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